Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Gable

"That's it - Clark Gable!!"

I was out at a consignment store this morning. I wanted to see if they had any long sleeve shirts for my kids or - and I'm really being silly here - someone dumped loads of Thomas the Tank Engine wooden train stuff on them. The nice old lady who runs the place (or more accurately knits and microwaves things that smell bad) gave my son a lego Thomas last time that they happened to have and I knew that had a coach to pull that should still be there (it was). On the way around the building the lady told me my son looked like someone but she couldn't figure out who. Then she came into the kids room to tell me. "He looks like Clark Gable. It's the eyes! That's it - Clark Gable!"

Now - this is my son.

And this is Clark Gable. Other than the mustache they are of course identical.

I know she was being nice. But there are all kinds of things wrong with that comparison. First off - Clark Gable is a man. Well - was. But a fully grown man is what he was. I know Hollywood people are an Olympic level of demented but nobody was ever filming a movie and thought, "We need a baby actor for this part - find out if Gable is free. He'd be perfect!" I even checked - the youngest he was when he was in a movie was 21 - so nobody saw him as a wee sprog and is now comparing my little bugger to him that way.

Secondly he's generally considered by the more aged amongst us to have been somewhat of a heartthrob. I'm a modern man and am more than happy to say that Clark Gable is a frighteningly good looking man. Again - man. I even had a look and found a quote from Doris Day about how masculine he was, and that he, "had such a devastating effect on women." My son isn't two years old yet. That's wrong. I'm well aware of the putrid nasty filth that Google search awful awful crap about kids and somehow end up clicking on this blog. Well you can all fuck off. But little old ladies that eat microwaved canned soup aren't in the same ballpark obviously - but they shouldn't be saying that a toddler is as hot as one of the hottest movie stars ever. (Incidentally I can't eat canned soup now by the way. The consistency of it is how imagine an eye would be if you ate it.)

Thirdly the only trivia I know about Gable is that when he enlisted in the US Army, Adolf Hitler put up a pretty big reward for anyone who could capture Gable unharmed. I'm hoping this old dear has heard word that this particular competition is over at this point. Not only because Gable died in 1960, nor that he'd be 120 now but that my son really isn't a substitute for him. At all.

If he does look like Gable he didn't get it from me. I'm not an ugly man. I'm more a grower than anything else but I certainly don't have that strong-jawed dark classic thing going on. But I do alight. Maybe the Gable thing skipped a generation. Neither of my parents have a hint of Gable I'm confident to say. Nor do my wife;s parents. As for further up - photos I've seen of my wife's Grandparents look exactly like her parents do now. It's eerie. My grandparents looked like grandparents do. I mean this in the best way, but Diego Maradonna looks a bit like my Gran. And my Grandfather looked like John Wayne and Ronald Reagan's gay love child.